Dawn: a Journey to the Beginning of the Solar System
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DAWN: A JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM C.T. Russell(1), A. Coradini(2), W.C. Feldman(3), R. Jaumann(4), A.S. Konopliv(5), T.B. McCord(6), L.A. McFadden(7), H.Y. McSween(8), S. Mottola(4), G. Neukum(9), C.M. Pieters(10) C.A. Raymond(5), D.E. Smith(11), M.V. Sykes(12) B.G. Williams(5), and M.T. Zuber(13) 1IGPP&ESS, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567; [email protected] 2IFSI, Via del fosso del Cavaliere, 00133 ROMA Italy 3LANL, MS D466, NIS-1, Los Alamos, NM 87545 4DLR Rutherfordstr 2, D-12489 Berlin, Germany 5JPL, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109 6University of Hawaii, 2525 Correa Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822 7University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 8University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1410 9Freie Universitat Berlin, Malteser Str.74-100, 12249 Berlin, Germany 10Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 11GSFC, MC 920, Greenbelt, MD 20771 12U of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 13MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139 ABSTRACT/RESUME Once Jupiter formed, by gravitational collapse, its orbital motion relative to the asteroids Dawn, NASA's ninth Discovery mission, is provided a periodic gravitational pulse that scheduled to launch on May 27, 2006 on a accelerated them so they would no longer journey that will take it into orbit about the two accrete. Thus the formation of Jupiter stopped most massive asteroids 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres. much of the geochemical evolution of this Dawn's goal is to understand the conditions and region. By exploring the two most massive processes present at the solar system's earliest planetesimals, Dawn studies some of the earliest epoch, and the role of water content and size in processes in the solar system, those occurring planetary evolution. To this end Dawn carries a during its first 5-10 million years. framing camera, a mapping spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a gamma-ray/neutron spectrometer, a 2. THE MISSION magnetometer and a gravity investigation. Dawn uses solar arrays to power its xenon ion engine Figure 1 introduces the Dawn mission. The that provides thrust at an efficiency that is ten backdrop is a painting by W.K. Hartmann of a times greater than chemical rockets provide. nebula as the central star begins to shine. Visible Dawn is a partnership between UCLA, JPL, and are the dust and rocks that are coming together to the American, German and Italian space form the terrestrial or rocky planets. Also shown agencies. are the protoplanets, 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres as we see them today with Hubble Space Telescope. 1. INTRODUCTION Vesta is about 520 km across and Ceres almost 1000 km. Vesta has a very bright surface and is Over 4.6 billion years ago a cold gas cloud, 2.34 AU from the sun. Ceres at 2.77 AU is much containing the material now found in the solar darker, consistent with the general darkening of system, began to collapse. In that cloud two material with distance from the sun in this region competing processes took place: a chemical of space. process, in which solid material formed out of the gases, making rocks and small planetesimals; The spacecraft has rather large solar panels and a physical process, in which stars formed by roughly 21 m tip-to-tip, a 5 m magnetometer a gravitational instability. Hot stars, once boom and three ion thrusters, one of which is formed, dispersed the gas cloud and stopped the shown in operation. The communication dish is formation of rocky planetary materials. In the aimed at the Earth by pointing the entire region that we now call the asteroid belt, the spacecraft. When the instrument panel on the top accretion process was stopped in yet another of the spacecraft has to face the body, the competition between physics and chemistry. spacecraft is oriented in this direction (nadir Fig. 1. Artist's conception of Dawn spacecraft thrusting its ion engines on the way to Vesta and Ceres. pointing). To undertake such a mission is were found by the Von Zach search team, difficult and expensive. In order both to employ including Vesta discovered by H. Olbers on relevant and recent heritage and to afford to be March 29, 1807. able to visit each of Vesta and Ceres, a partnership was formed between the American, We now know much about Ceres and Vesta. German and Italian space agencies. The German They are two of three remaining large asteroids, space agency, DLR, is represented by the the other being Pallas, which is much more Institute of Space Sensor Technology and difficult to reach. Tables 1 and 2 give some of Planetary Exploration in Berlin and the Italian the physical parameters of these bodies. Pallas is space agency, ASI, by CNR/IFSI in Rome. The dark, resides in the same region of the asteroid project is managed by the Jet Propulsion belt as Ceres and has relatively low density Laboratory for NASA and the spacecraft is built approaching that of Ceres. Although by Orbital Sciences Corporation. The overall measurements at Pallas are highly desirable, direction of the project is provided by the UCLA exploring Vesta and Ceres may be sufficient to principal investigator, C. T. Russell, with the bracket the properties of large "minor" planets. advice of the science team, the co-authors of this report. The reflectance spectrum of Vesta, contrasted to that of the other asteroids in Figure 2, is similar 3. TARGETS to that of the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite meteorites and to terrestrial basalts. The Late in the 18th century it was realized that the existence of basalts on the surface of Vesta Titius-Bode's law predicted a planet near 2.8 AU indicates that it melted at least partially. This where none had been seen. Thus a search was belief was later reinforced by geochemical initiated by Baron Von Zach, the court analyses of the HED meteorites that indicate that astronomer at Gotha. His consortium was a core formed. It appears that Vesta melted and scooped, however, on the first day of the resolidified creating a layered structure with nineteenth century when Giuseppe Piazzi of lighter crust on the outside, then pyroxene and Palermo discovered Ceres. Later other asteroids olivine, and iron in successively deeper layers. Table 1. Physical properties of the three largest asteroids Body Mass Principal Density Period G IRAS [1019kg] Radii [km] [kg/m3 ] [hr] [m/s2] Albedo 1 Ceres 94.8 ± 0.3 480x480x454 2200 ± 50 9.08 0.23 0.11 2 Pallas 21.4 ± 0.8 287x263x251 2700 ± 150 7.81 0.30 0.16 4 Vesta 26.7 ± 0.3 280x272x227 3700 ± 100 5.34 0.32 0.42 1.2 Table 2. Orbital parameters of the largest asteroids Ceres, joined spectrum Re-scaled NH4-montmorillonite Body SMA Eccent- Inclin- Period ricity ation 1.0 1 Ceres 2.77 AU 0.077 10.6 4.61 yrs 2 Pallas 2.77 AU 0.232 34.8 4.61 yrs 4 Vesta 2.36 AU 0.090 7.1 3.63 yrs 0.8 Ceres is very different than Vesta. It has not been Scaled Reflectance linked to any specific meteorites because in part it has a very bland spectrum. It is much darker 0.6 than Vesta and much less dense. It is believed to contain much water: on cosmological grounds, 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 based on its average density, and from evidence Wavelength (mm) for the alteration of surface materials by water in Fig. 3. IR reflectance of Ceres showing a spectral the spectrum shown in Figure 3. If Ceres could feature possibly associated with the effects retain a lot of water then it might have remained aqueous alteration [2] cool and unmelted with very little thermal alteration since formation. propulsion is performed using the ion thrusters and 400 kg of xenon fuel. The ion thrusters 4. MISSION DESIGN accelerate the xenon to a speed ten times that of chemical engines, enabling the mission to be Dawn's launch is scheduled to take place on May carried out with a small launch vehicle, keeping 27, 2006 on a Delta 2925H launch vehicle. costs within the Discovery guidelines. When the Figure 4 shows the interplanetary trajectory, spacecraft arrives at each object it is moving very including thrusting and non-thrusting periods. slowly because it fires its ion engines to decelerate Dawn arrives at Vesta four years after launch in for many months prior to performing a search of July 2010 and spends 11 months in orbit there. In the sky around the body for moons and dust. June 2011 it spirals outward from Vesta and When this survey is complete, the orbit is lowered heads to Ceres arriving three years later in to an approximately 700 km altitude orbit and the August 2014. Again it spends 11 months surface completely mapped with the framing mapping. All interplanetary and most planetary camera. 2006 Vesta-Ceres Rendezvous A 16 Psyche Vesta 15 Eunomia 3 8 Flora Earth 2 Vesta 4 Vesta Arrival 7/30/10 Launch 5/27/06 Normalized Spectral Reflectance 1 Ceres 1 7/3/11 8/20/14 Vesta Ceres Departure Arrival Ceres 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 µ Wavelength ( m) Non thrusting Thrusting Earth, Vesta, Ceres Fig. 2 Visible and near IR reflectance spectrum of Vesta, Ceres and several other major Fig. 4. The planned Dawn interplanetary asteroids[1] trajectory Table 3. Orbital parameters of the Dawn spacecraft at Vesta and Ceres Body Period Dist.